Last weekend one of the most important things we discovered is that folks working in the language industry are some of the coolest, smartest, most fun-loving yet hard-working people. They are also extremely generous. After attending the LavaConand LocWorld31 Conferences, teams and members from various companies all around the world took up the Coastal Flag Challenge to hike along the Howth trail to raise money for Translators without Borders (TWB), a non-profit organisation that works to close critical language gaps that hinder humanitarian efforts worldwide. They support the work of hundreds of organisations in the areas of crisis relief, health and education. Continue reading →

This month is going to be very busy and exciting for innovators in the retail as well as entertainment industry. Between, RTBE Expo in London (9-10 March) and South by Southwest Festival in Austin (11-20 March), there’s a lot going on in terms of innovation and industry knowledge sharing.

The KantanMT team is looking forward to exhibiting at stand #982 during the annual RBTE 2016 and meeting new and established eCommerce companies at the event, we decided to create our own list of 5 companies, which are sure to make an impact in the retail industry. These companies are young, innovative, and they understand the evolving needs of the industry.

2014 has arrived – and there is no better way to get the ball rolling than by planning what events to attend. Over the next twelve months there is a vast selection of conferences, unconferences, workshops, roundtables, webinars and other events planned around the world.

It was hard to narrow the list of everything going on, so KantanMT tried to focus on events that were related to Machine Translation and the Natural Language Processing (NLP) industry, localization, translation technologies and post-editing. Some of the events are more academic, while others are more business orientated.

Unconferences and Conferences…

We added some ‘unconferences’ to the list, these are the opposite of conferences. Unconferences are peer-to-peer interactions on topics chosen by participants at the beginning of a session, unlike more formal conferences. Unconference participants choose the topics, so it is much easier to promote an open discussion and are a good way for industry professionals to get together in an informal setting, sharing their own challenges and solutions.

Localization World, one of the biggest industry conferences, has had a great response from holding unconferences alongside its traditional conferences and the Association of Language Companies (ALC) also endorses the value of unconferences. The next ALC unconference will held in the early part of February.

Hopefully, this list will be a useful resource in deciding what events and conferences to visit during 2014. You may have registered for some of these events already, if not, then now is the time to start filling in your calendar. If you know of a relevant conference or event we missed, please add it to the comment section at the bottom of this post.

The users call is a bi-monthly webinar where TAUS members discuss solutions for measuring Machine Translation quality. Some of the participants include; Autodesk, CA Technologies, Cisco, Dell, Digital Linguistics, eBay, EMC and Google. To register for the webinar, members can email memberservices@taus.net

This webinar, hosted by BrightTalk is a discussion by Jaap van der Meer (TAUS) and Scott Abel (The Content Wrangler) on how translation has become a necessary part of everyday life, the same way as electricity, water and the internet have become indispensable.

Zbigniew Braniecki, Software Engineer, Mozilla Corporation will speak about L20n, a new localization framework that isolates localization and enables translators to give naturally expressive translations for even the most complex user interfaces. Mozilla is investing in moving its products – Firefox, Firefox OS, and Firefox for Android – to this new architecture.

Anders Holt, European Director and Robert Timms, Technical Director at translate plus will present a webinar on integrating content management platforms; CMS, DMS, PIM or e-procurement system into the translation workflow. They will discuss the integration methods available and how to get the best results and benefits of integration.

This academic conference presents research from the centre for research and innovation in translation and translation technology (CRITT). The program covers a variety of topics including; translation and cognitive processes, translation and translation theory and observations about Machine Translation and translation and post-editing.

The Unconference is geared towards language company owners and senior members of staff who get together without any formal presentation structure for more intimate brainstorming and discussion sessions in a casual and relaxed environment.

The first of three Localization World conferences of 2014, Localization World is the leading conference for international business, translation and localization providing opportunities for networking and information exchange.

Daniel Zielinski will explain how the memoQ server can be used for managing translation projects effectively. See the different types of projects and workflows supported, and learn how to set up, prepare, monitor and complete a translation project with the memoQ server.

This three day event is hosted by Kilgray Translation Technologies and is aimed at freelance language professionals, LSPs and corporate translation users. The conference gives an overview of translation technology and how it can be integrated into businesses.

March

This conference is for those involved in creating user assistance content. There will be a variety of presentations focused on developing content strategies, key technologies and tools that are used to create well-designed interfaces, technical communications and support information.

The theme of this webinar is the application and influence of MT technologies on global business. Tony O’Dowd, Founder and Chief Architect presents the KantanMT.com cloud-based platform introducing some of the KantanMT technologies and usage cases, including; KantanWatch, KantanISR, KantanAnalytics, TotalRecall, PEX and GENTRY.

Udi Hershkovich, Vice President of Business Development at Safaba will discuss key business imperatives for businesses and how Enterprise MT removes the language barriers that face global businesses.

The conference is a meeting point for academics, professionals and students involved in the game localization industry. The conference aims to foster the interdisciplinary debate in these fields, combine them as academic areas of research and contribute to the development of best practices.

The game Localization Summit at GDC is supported and organized by the IGDA Game Localization SIG, and it is aimed at helping localization professionals as well as the entire community of game developers and publishers understand how to plan and execute game localization and culturalization as a part of the development cycle. There are other GDC conferences planned for Europe and China later in the year.

The annual GALA conference brings together localization industry professionals for networking opportunities and peer-to-peer learning of the latest technologies and emerging trends in localization, language and translation technology.

This is an annual international event focusing on the latest technologies and localization industry trends. The conference is suited to LSPs and freelance translators, and covers technical communication and implications for the translation industry. Big data vs. the translation industry; CAT tools, MT, cloud computing, project management and the human factor; recruitment and training.

The executive forum consists of two-days of meetings for buyers and providers of language services and technologies. It is an open exchange about language business innovation and translation technology with the theme ‘translation as a utility’. Topics to be covered include; translation data, MT showcases, DQF evaluation, translation customer support and integration with CRM systems.

Conference themes include; looking at the essential core skills of a technical communicator, accessibility and usability, technical communication and social media, multi‐authoring and international teamwork and training technical authors in the internet age.

Apr 26-30, 2014

Conference:EACL-2014, European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Gothenburg, Sweden

Available to all ACL members and covers research in computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, speech, information retrieval, multimodal language processing and language issues in emerging domains such as bioinformatics and social media. Workshops and tutorials are held during Saturday-Sunday April 26-27th, while the main conference is runs from Monday-Wednesday April 28th-30th.

This conference aims to set up a forum where companies, LSPs and translators can discuss workflows and best practices that relate to memoQ or translation technology in general. Attendees will discuss industry trends attend workshops and exchange information with translators, LSPs, and translation end users.

The Technical Communication Summit is a source of learning for professional technical communicators giving training on the latest communication techniques, publishing technologies and business trends in the industry.

Hosted by ABBYY Language Services, is a meeting for buyers and providers of translation services. The participants will get a good insight into MT technology, customization, implementation requirements and business cases.

June

The theme for this meeting is ‘convergence’ with industry leaders discussing best practices, possible common approaches and shared services to optimize translation efficiencies through a series of short presentations.

As part of the LPM Certification Program, this two-day project management training workshop will be held alongside Localization world. There is an eight week self-study part that must be completed before the workshop. It is open to Localization Project Managers with at least three years project management experience. Early bird and group registration discounts are available.

The second localization conference of 2014 will be held in Dublin with the theme of “disruptive innovation” and how this impacts the localization industry and the role of translators. Topics covered at the conference will include; advanced localization management, global business, localization core competencies and technology.

In association with Writers UA, the UA Europe technical communication conference focuses on software user assistance and online Help, and provides information on the latest industry trends, technical developments, and best practice in software UA.

Jun 16-18, 2014

Conference:EAMT 2014, European Association for Machine Translation, Dubrovnik, Croatia – 17th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation

The conference is aimed at anyone interested in MT and translation-related tools and resources. Topics will include; MT in multilingual public service (eGovernment etc.), MT for the web, MT embedded in other services, MT evaluation techniques and evaluation results and more.

August

The bi-annual COLING conference, is one of the premier Natural Language Processing conferences in the world. The conference will include full papers, oral presentations, poster presentations, demonstrations, tutorials, and workshops on a variety of technical areas on natural language and computation.

September

This conference is aimed at promoting translator training, and will address training in areas such as field/domain specialization, technical skills (including pre-/post-editing of MT), revision skills and management skills (soft skills).

The agenda will be set in the first session and then there will be 3-4 break-out sessions with topics the group chose together. Attendees can submit topics to be considered from Wednesday, October 17th and can be submitted at VistaTEC’s booth.

November

The conference is for internationalization experts, tools vendors, software implementers, and business and program managers who want to discuss the best methods for doing business in international markets. The conference will feature subject areas; cloud computing, upgrading to HTML5, integrating with social networking software, and implementing mobile apps.

The technical communication conference and trade fair examines different aspects of localization, internationalization and globalization. It is the largest technical communication, authoring and IT management conference in the world and participating companies offer industrial, software and services for technical communication.

CloudCom promotes cloud computing platforms. It is co-sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Cloud Computing Association. The conference attracts researchers, developers, users, students and practitioners from the fields of big data, systems architecture, services research, virtualization, security and privacy and high performance computing.

KantanMT will look forward to meeting you at some of these conferences over the next year.

KantanMT had an exciting year as it transitioned from a publicly funded business idea into a commercial enterprise that was officially launched in June 2013. The KantanMT team are delighted to have surpassed expectations, by developing and refining cutting edge technologies that make Machine Translation easier to understand and use.

Here are some of the highlights for 2013, as KantanMT looks back on an exceptional year.

Strong Customer Focus…

The year started on a high note, with the opening of a second office in Galway, Ireland, and KantanMT kept the forward momentum going as the year progressed. The Galway office is focused on customer service, product education and Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and is home to Aidan Collins, User Engagement Manager, Kevin McCoy, Customer Relationship Manager and MT Success Coach, and Gina Lawlor, Customer Relationship co-ordinator.

KantanMT officially launched the KantanMT Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) platform as a commercial entity in June 2013. The platform was tested pre-launch by both industry and academic professionals, and was presented at the European OPTIMALE (Optimizing Professional Translator Training in a Multilingual Europe) workshop in Brussels. OPTIMALE is an academic network of 70 partners from 32 European countries, and the organization aims to promote professional translator training as the translation industry merges with the internet and translation automation.

The KantanMT Community…

The KantanMT member’s community now includes top tier Language Service Providers (LSPs), multinationals and smaller organizations. In 2013, the community has grown from 400 members in January to 3400 registered members in December, and in response to this growth, KantanMT introduced two partner programs, with the objective of improving the Machine Translation ecosystem.

The Developer Partner Program, which supports organizations interested in developing integrated technology solutions, and the Preferred Supplier of MT Program, dedicated to strengthening the use of MT technology in the global translation supply chain. KantanMT’s Preferred Suppliers of MT are:

To date, the most popular target languages on the KantanMT platform are; French, Spanish and Brazilian-Portuguese. Members have uploaded more than 67 billion training words and built approx. 7,000 customized KantanMT engines that translated more than 500 million words.

As usage of the platform increased, KantanMT focused on developing new technologies to improve the translation process, including a mobile application for iOS and Android that allows users to get access to their KantanMT engines on the go.

KantanMT’s Core Technologies from 2013…

KantanMT have been kept busy continuously developing and releasing new technologies to help clients build robust business models to integrate Machine Translation into existing workflows.

TotalRecall™ – combines TM and MT technology, TM matches with a ‘fuzzy match’ score of less than 85% are automatically put through the customized MT engine, giving the users the benefits of both technologies.

KantanISR™ Instant Segment Retraining technology that allows members near instantaneous correction and retraining of their KantanMT engines.

Kantan API – critical for the development of software connectors and smooth integration of KantanMT into existing translation workflows. The success of the MemoQ connector, led to the development of subsequent connectors for MemSource and XTM.

KantanMT sourced and cleaned a range of bi-directional domain specific stock engines that consist of approx. six million words across legal, medical and financial domains and made them available to its members. KantanMT also developed support for Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Croatian Languages during 2013.

Recognition as Business Innovators…

KantanMT received awards for business innovation and entrepreneurship throughout the year. Founder and Chief Architect, Tony O’Dowd was presented with the ICT Commercialization award in September.

In October, KantanMT was shortlisted for the PITCH start-up competition and participated in the ALPHA Program for start-ups at Dublin’s Web Summit, the largest tech conference in Europe. Earlier in the year KantanMT was also shortlisted for the Vodafone Start-up of the Year awards.

KantanMT were silver sponsors at the annual 2013 ASLIB Conference ‘Adopting the theme Translating and the Computer’ that took place in London, in November, and in October, Tony O’Dowd, presented at the TAUS Machine Translation Showcase at Localization World in Silicon Valley.

KantanMT have recently published a white paper introducing its cornerstone Quality Estimation technology, KantanAnalytics, and how this technology provides solutions to the biggest industry challenges facing widespread adoption of Machine Translation.

Listings

Held in association with Hewlett-Packard Laboratories (HP Labs), the conference is open to researchers, developers, users, students and practitioners from the fields of big data, systems architecture, services research, virtualization, security and high performance computing.

The forum highlights key issues in language education, particularly in the workplace and the new technologies that are becoming a key part of the process. The event, will promote international networking and has four main themes; Corporate Training, Pre-Experience Learners, Intercultural Communication and Online Learning.

Stephen Doherty and Federico Gaspari, CNGL (Centre for Next Generation Localisation) will give an overview of post-editing and different post-editing scenarios from ‘gist’ to ‘full’ post-edits. They will also give advice on different post-editing strategies and how they differ for Machine Translation systems.

The conference will address the challenges of Human Language Technologies (HLT) in computer science and linguistics. The event covers a wide range of topics including; electronic language resources and tools, formalisation of natural languages, parsing and other forms of NL processing.

The conference, which is the second largest of the 38 IEEE technical societies will focus on the latest advancements in broadband, wireless, multimedia, internet, image and voice communications. Some of the topics presented referring to localization occur on the 10th December and include; Localization Schemes, Localization and Link Layer Issues, and Detection, Estimation and Localization.

This event brings together QA and Localisation Managers, Directors and VPs from game developers around the world to discuss key game localization industry challenges. The event in London, June 2013 was a huge success, as more than 120 senior QA and localization professionals from developers, publishers and 3rd party suppliers of all sizes and platforms came to learn, benchmark and network.

The Association of Asian Translation Industry (AATI) is holding an International Conference on Language and Translation or “Translator Day” in three countries; Thailand on December 11, 2013, Vietnam on December 13, 2013, and Cambodia on December 15, 2013. The events provide translators, interpreters, translation agencies, foreign language centres, NGO’s, FDI financed enterprises and other translation purchasers with opportunities to meet.

This webinar, which is hosted by GALA and presented by Terena Bell covers how to open up new revenue streams by introducing reseller programs to current business models. The webinar is aimed at world trade associations, language schools, and other non-translation companies wishing to offer their clients translation, interpreting, or localization services.

The workshops, hosted by BulTreeBank Group­­­­­­­ serve to promote new and ongoing high-quality work related to syntactically-annotated corpora such as treebanks. Treebanks are important resources for Natural Language processing applications including Machine Translation and information extraction. The workshops will focus on different aspects of treebanking; descriptive, theoretical, formal and computational.

Are you planning to go to any events during December? KantanMT would like to hear about your thoughts on what makes a good event in the localization industry.